Arriving in Kathmandu
In Kathmandu with the Brisbane Shoulder Fellowship, alongside doctors from several countries. The view from the B&B hospital helipad takes in the Himalayas, partly hidden by cloud.
With thanks for the warm hospitality of our Nepalese hosts. Looking forward to the shoulder arthroscopy course.
Affiliations: St Andrew's War Memorial Hospital, QUASR, the ARC Training Centre for Joint Biomechanics, QUT and The University of Queensland.
What a shoulder fellowship is
A fellowship is the training a surgeon does after they have already qualified as a specialist. Orthopaedic training produces a general orthopaedic surgeon; a fellowship is where that surgeon concentrates on one area, in this case the shoulder and upper limb, for a defined period, usually a year. Fellows operate, run clinics under supervision, take part in the unit's research and teach the trainees and students below them.
Fellowships draw applicants internationally, which is why the group in Kathmandu included doctors from several countries. That mix is part of the point. A fellow arriving from a different health system brings a different set of assumptions about which patients get operated on and when, and those assumptions get tested against each other over the course of the year.
Why a fellowship travels
Taking the fellowship group on a teaching trip does several things at once that a year spent entirely in one hospital cannot. Fellows see the same operations performed with different equipment and in a different health system, which is a direct lesson in which parts of a technique are essential and which are simply what the local theatre happens to stock. They also teach, which is the fastest way to find the gaps in your own understanding of something.
For the host unit, a visiting faculty brings techniques that may not yet be established locally, along with the discussion of when those techniques are and are not worth adopting. Exchanges of this kind tend to continue afterwards, through shared research and through surgeons from the host unit later travelling in the other direction. Individual results vary.
Related information
- The shoulder fellowship page explains the programme.
- Our post on the B&B Shoulder Arthroscopy Course.
- Our post on the international faculty in Kathmandu.
- The shoulder surgery page.